Daz How do you guys create outdoor environments/scenes?

[327]

Seems like creating scenes for indoors is way more simple than for outdoor scenes. You have whatever indoor environments you can grab, change whatever props you like, add some extra lights, hdri for windows and done. But outdoors seems way harder, You can find some small environments, but if you only use them, then you are basically limiting yourself and the angle you can make the scene in. For example, this bus stop:


How would you guys work on this to make it better? Just HDRI? Try to find some road props to extend this? Or do you just limit the camera angles and try to work only within whats there? I see sometimes when checking out other VNs people seem to have no problem creating outdoor scenes, city environments, etc and as far as I know they are not just simple HDRIs, so I am wondering if there is something I am missing.

 

[TranscendentThots]

Seems like creating scenes for indoors is way more simple than for outdoor scenes. You have whatever indoor environments you can grab, change whatever props you like, add some extra lights, hdri for windows and done. But outdoors seems way harder, You can find some small environments, but if you only use them, then you are basically limiting yourself and the angle you can make the scene in. For example, this bus stop:
View attachment 2157935

How would you guys work on this to make it better? Just HDRI? Try to find some road props to extend this? Or do you just limit the camera angles and try to work only within whats there? I see sometimes when checking out other VNs people seem to have no problem creating outdoor scenes, city environments, etc and as far as I know they are not just simple HDRIs, so I am wondering if there is something I am missing.

Here's a look at

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for large outdoor environments. Basically, you put a sky HDRI, then a big terrain or city skyline prop, then a bunch of individual buildings, then walkways/roads/trees/details. (Search the digital storefronts for terms like "City," "Outdoors," "Environment," or "Buildings.")

If you don't want to throw a bunch of money at buying assets,

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and

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are reasonably good places to source free 3D art assets.

In your very specific example, you could copy and paste the architecture already in the scene so you have three of this thing side by side, then delete the extra bus stops. You could even make facades that resemble full 4-walled buildings by rotating it, and then re-texture some of them so they look like the other buildings are made of different materials. (If you don't want to point the camera away from the ground at all times, you'd probably need some sort of modular intersection piece, though.)

If you want unique assets or you want to learn how to modify this asset, you're going to need to learn to use 3D modelling software.

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is free and pretty powerful, and it also has a workflow for taking objects from daz to blender and back again, so it's probably a good place for most beginners to start. You'll also want

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(The official Daz Bridge is much worse.) When you're finished editing, save your .blend file so you can edit it again later, export as OBJ and load it into Daz manually. If you need to move poses or animation frames back and forth for some reason,

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If, at any point in this message, I said to do a thing, and you don't know how to do that thing, you should probably google how to do that thing. Save bookmarks. Take notes. Learn. Practice. We'll always be here to help answer specific questions, of course.

Good luck!

 

[MissFortune]

Not really. It's just a hole is Daz's market. What you're seeing is that people who've worked with Daz for a while are often used to being able to hide things quite well. Camera and angle tricks, canvases, etc. Over time, you just get a keen eye for that type of stuff, and as you get more experienced, you'll know what to do that much quicker. A rule of thumb when rendering with Daz for a VN or otherwise, what you can't see doesn't matter. Plan the areas where the majority of your scene will focus and make them look good. Know where your reflections (windows, glasses, etc.) are pointing. Stuff of that sort. Nothing else matters, until it does.

So, using this as an example, you probably have two or so realistic options. Realistic, meaning I'm not expecting you to pick up Blender to modify an asset or assets.

1. Assuming that you're able to delete the bus stop (either via it being a singular item or removing it via Cutout Opacity.), duplicate the entire set > Drag it over to the left or right > Delete/Hide/Remove the bust stop on the duplicated set > Now, with the duplicated set selected in the scene pane, create a new instance (Create > New Node Instance) of that duplicated set. Then keep doing that until it's long enough for your liking.

2. Kitbashing. Multiple assets put together. So, something like your bus stop might not look too far from

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. For example, here's a render with three different assets I threw together for my VN:



On the left (out of camera's view) there's Truform's Asian Restaurant (iirc), the sidewalk/road from the New York Stores linked above, and Miami Deco with adjusted lights across the road. This is a bit of an extreme example though. Something like this is a bit more normal:



The road and sidewalk are from

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and the fence is from some mansion asset. The trees in the upper left are an HDRI from

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(easily one of the best purchases I've made, honestly, and I rarely say anything good about HDRIs.). The interior isn't important here, though. It's that opening in the fence and the trees. Where do you think that leads? You could say a park, obviously. Or it could some kind of sports field. While I'm not showing much, it registers as normal to brain while allowing the viewer to interpret where that road goes.

2.5: If you're low on VRAM and already have a road/sidewalk texture, then you can definitely get away with

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. Just make a cube primitive, make them bigger, and drop one of those shaders onto it. Used correctly with some DoF and it can fit right in.

 

[KiaAzad]

Making a realistic outside scene is simply too hard and heavy.
I've avoided outdoor scenes as much as I could, but when I had to, I've used an HDRI and covered the distance with walls, and mountains.
Also added depth of field to hide the simplicity of those walls and mountains and blurred it into shades of color.

 

[MissFortune]

Making a realistic outside scene is simply too hard and heavy.
I've avoided outdoor scenes as much as I could, but when I had to, I've used an HDRI and covered the distance with walls, and mountains.

It's really not hard or heavy, or rather, it doesn't have to be. You just have to plan a bit more than you otherwise would, specifically with your camera angles/framing and character placement. It's really not that complicated.

 

[TranscendentThots]

Seems like creating scenes for indoors is way more simple than for outdoor scenes. You have whatever indoor environments you can grab, change whatever props you like, add some extra lights, hdri for windows and done. But outdoors seems way harder, You can find some small environments, but if you only use them, then you are basically limiting yourself and the angle you can make the scene in. For example, this bus stop:
View attachment 2157935

How would you guys work on this to make it better? Just HDRI? Try to find some road props to extend this? Or do you just limit the camera angles and try to work only within whats there? I see sometimes when checking out other VNs people seem to have no problem creating outdoor scenes, city environments, etc and as far as I know they are not just simple HDRIs, so I am wondering if there is something I am missing.

Oh, also. You might be interested in this

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It's by LazyTutorials. They're great. Second only to RoyalSkies in terms of not wasting the viewer's time.

(If you have trouble pausing it between steps, try setting speed to 0.5x)

 

[Bad Buster]

Kit bashing is probably the #1 option most times. Also, like MissFortune mentioned, duplicating parts of your current environment works as well.

I know that bus stop asset you have as your example. IIRC, you can delete (or hide) both the stop and the building. Then you can duplicate that road and side walk to your hearts content and make a road to nowhere

There's other assets, like the New York Tenements one, that are used heavily in many VN's. That one allows you to mix and match various blocks of buildings and also comes with a load of street props.

HDRI's are also very useful, especially for distant backgrounds.

If you don't want to download or buy prebuilt HDRI's, you can make your own from Google street views pretty easy and even add the lighting component for DAZ use.

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[UncleNanard]

Seems like creating scenes for indoors is way more simple than for outdoor scenes. You have whatever indoor environments you can grab, change whatever props you like, add some extra lights, hdri for windows and done. But outdoors seems way harder, You can find some small environments, but if you only use them, then you are basically limiting yourself and the angle you can make the scene in. For example, this bus stop:
View attachment 2157935

How would you guys work on this to make it better? Just HDRI? Try to find some road props to extend this? Or do you just limit the camera angles and try to work only within whats there? I see sometimes when checking out other VNs people seem to have no problem creating outdoor scenes, city environments, etc and as far as I know they are not just simple HDRIs, so I am wondering if there is something I am missing.

If I should do this scene I’ll just keep the bench and use it in a better city environnement.

Don’t use HDRI for this purpose if you are not lazy.

The best for me, and it’s probably the thing I love the most is to use différents and différents assets for make my own scene.
For that learn how to use the instance (use instancify and instances to objects.), custom shadders, that’s take a lot of time. Some scene took me 2 weeks just for the base environment but you can have something unique !

 

[GNVE]

(started this post in the afternoon, got distracted and forgot to post so some things are a repeat of what others have said).
Daz Doesn't really like doing outdoor stuff with large open spaces. But I try. Do expect to overload your graphics card and/or long(er) rendering times. There are some tricks you can use though.
Scenes I use are made by kitbashing environments together.

• Use instances of items rather than duplicates. The upside is that it takes less resources than having all items be duplicated (you can even have grouped instances but not instances of instances) the downside is that you are not able to change anything about the instance. You can only change the original and then it will be applied to all instances. (Though this can be an advantage as well. In one scene I have a lot of lights that need to chance colour. With instances I can change them quickly).
• Choose an architecture that is light on detail. The less objects in the scene and the less details there are on those objects the easier it is on the graphics card. So if choosing between fantasy castle and modern architecture the modern architecture is easier as it is a lot of flat white walls with little detail.
• Obstruct sightlines (use corners, trees, fencing etc. to obstruct the view so you don't need to worry about what is behind it.
• Use backdrops. There is a (or several) pack(s) that has a flat and curved backdrop for a cityscape, mountains, tree line etc. If something is far enough away you can get away with a flat backdrop. (the further away the less detail needed.)
• Hide things that aren't seen in the scene. (Use grouping to do this quickly)
• Older assets have generally been designed for use with graphic cards that have less VRAM and thus have less detail. great to use for items further away.

Spoiler: Examples

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[MidnightArrow]

Seems like creating scenes for indoors is way more simple than for outdoor scenes. You have whatever indoor environments you can grab, change whatever props you like, add some extra lights, hdri for windows and done. But outdoors seems way harder, You can find some small environments, but if you only use them, then you are basically limiting yourself and the angle you can make the scene in. For example, this bus stop:
View attachment 2157935

How would you guys work on this to make it better? Just HDRI? Try to find some road props to extend this? Or do you just limit the camera angles and try to work only within whats there? I see sometimes when checking out other VNs people seem to have no problem creating outdoor scenes, city environments, etc and as far as I know they are not just simple HDRIs, so I am wondering if there is something I am missing.

Just use

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.

 

[327]

Just use

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.

That's super nice! Do you know of something similar for a more suburban/small town feel? Thank you all for the recommendations by the way! I already knew about kitbashing, but was wondering if there was something inhouse that everyone uses to maybe make custom streets/ buildings thats modular, either way the discussion/suggestion is nice. You guys are super talented at making these beautiful environments.

 

[MissFortune]

Do you know of something similar for a more suburban/small town feel? Thank you all for the recommendations by the way!

Unfortunately, Stonemason seems to be the only PA building large environments that still run smoothly even on older hardware. Which is largely most of his work is so popular. The closest stuff you'll find is likely suburban, but they aren't exactly rare or unique or anything. Haven't really ever used them, so I don't know how well they adapt to new shaders, but some of the

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stuff might be what you're looking for.

 

[TranscendentThots]

That's super nice! Do you know of something similar for a more suburban/small town feel? Thank you all for the recommendations by the way! I already knew about kitbashing, but was wondering if there was something inhouse that everyone uses to maybe make custom streets/ buildings thats modular, either way the discussion/suggestion is nice. You guys are super talented at making these beautiful environments.

You can find a smattering of decent subruban models for free over at

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. Be picky, because not all items in that collection are suburban. Also, make sure and check the license and origin of the model. You want some guy's abandoned archviz project they decided to upload, not a something ripped from a AAA video game.

You'll want to download them in the .obj file format, then

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.

Since the models were made by different artists, you may need to tweak their Scale parameters, and possibly even change the Textures in some of the Materials to get them looking like they belong in the same scene together. (This is a good skill to develop for Kitbashing, BTW.)

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

wondering if there was something inhouse that everyone uses to maybe make custom streets/ buildings thats modular, either way the discussion/suggestion is nice. You guys are super talented at making these beautiful environments.

Not really far I remember. There have been modular approach (mostly mediaval) in the past but now everything is more or like "vignette" shot focused. You may find quite some old gem here and there. That said if you have your way with IrayUber, importing fbx/obj is not that much of a hassle (it vary greatly how the asset/texturing was done).

Camera and angle tricks, canvases, etc. Over time, you just get a keen eye for that type of stuff, and as you get more experienced, you'll know what to do that much quicker.

My favorite one being use of huge ass mirror to fake the scope. It's not dumb if it works (good ol' gtx 1060 day) o/

Can't help myself to notice this in your renders :



Might consider a slight gloss/topcoat cornea push for low light environement :

 

[MissFortune]

My favorite one being use of huge ass mirror to fake the scope. It's not dumb if it works (good ol' gtx 1060 day) o/

Can't help myself to notice this in your renders :

View attachment 2162184

Might consider a slight gloss/topcoat cornea push for low light environement :

View attachment 2162191

View attachment 2162194

Yeah. I was aware of that (just hadn't done any postwork on it yet.). I have a few Photoshop brushes that I use and then blur a bit in postwork for renders like that. But I'll have to take a look at that slight gloss/topcoat.

 

[MidnightArrow]

That's super nice! Do you know of something similar for a more suburban/small town feel? Thank you all for the recommendations by the way! I already knew about kitbashing, but was wondering if there was something inhouse that everyone uses to maybe make custom streets/ buildings thats modular, either way the discussion/suggestion is nice. You guys are super talented at making these beautiful environments.

I used

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. There's not much to it, but I made an instanced duplicate for the window reflections and made big black cubes to block the light from the skybox. It turned out fine, though you can't move the camera at all.

If you want modular suburbia, Kitbash3d just released an Americana set. It looks high-quality (and high-cost) per usual but I don't know how well it'll run in Daz Studio (I use Blender, which K3d provide native files for).

As for the Daz shop, if you want suburban houses then I agree Collective3d is your best bet.

FirstBastion has some good older stuff too but I think their texture work is pretty bland, even the Iray stuff.

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And who could forget the Back to the Future ripoff.

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I noticed a pattern where Daz seemed to be more experimental and offer more variety and larger environments in their 3delight days. I guess they were trying to be a legit content broker instead of catering to porn makers on the down-low. Now it seems they've settled into a handful of themes (pirates, cyberpunk, etc.) to provide backdrops for sexy women. Also Iray can't handle big environments anyway both due to VRAM issues and floating-point problems fucking with the textures*. So as MissFortune said, anybody who tries to do a big environment that isn't named Stonemason ends up either murdering your GPU or putting the same bland samey textures everywhere.

* Although this is due to Daz Studio using centimeters for its native units, whereas Iray uses meters. Rather than change their default units, Daz just scale everything up 100x, which means you have 1/100th of Iray's native precision. It fucks up textures even just a dozen meters away from world center.

 

[Deleted member 1121028]

So as MissFortune said, anybody who tries to do a big environment that isn't named Stonemason ends up either murdering your GPU or putting the same bland samey textures everywhere.

lmao

 

[MissFortune]

If you want modular suburbia, Kitbash3d just released an Americana set. It looks high-quality (and high-cost) per usual but I don't know how well it'll run in Daz Studio (I use Blender, which K3d provide native files for).

I've tried importing Kitbash stuff into Daz with no extra work and it just imports entirely in sperate pieces. It works, but seems like you'll have to puzzle it together somehow, and that might be tough seeing how many pieces some of his assets have. I'm not sure how it imports into Blender, though. Does it come as advertised, or is it all in separate pieces like Daz?

I wonder if importing into Blender and exporting as an .fbx/.obj, then importing into Daz would work at all.

 

[MidnightArrow]

I've tried importing Kitbash stuff into Daz with no extra work and it just imports entirely in sperate pieces. It works, but seems like you'll have to puzzle it together somehow, and that might be tough seeing how many pieces some of his assets have. I'm not sure how it imports into Blender, though. Does it come as advertised, or is it all in separate pieces like Daz?

I wonder if importing into Blender and exporting as an .fbx/.obj, then importing into Daz would work at all.

Kitbash advertised they recently redid their assets for "version 5.0" or whatever, so I'm not sure if they changed anything.

Last time I downloaded a kit, it imported every single asset as a separate object. But they were all parented to empties (or "nulls" in Daz) so they're grouped appropriately in the outliner. Just select the root empty and select its children, and you can isolate assets like that.

I really wish K3d would put them into collections instead, since it's tedious sorting every single asset, but it's not difficult.

You can hit the "Only Selected" flag in the Obj exporter to export assets individually. I've successfully exported assets to Daz like that.

These days though, if I had to use Kitbash assets in Daz, I'd rather build the environment in Blender and export as one giant Obj. Blender has better viewport navigation and snapping tools, placing assets is much easier. You can create the ground, do some sculpting to make it hilly or whatever, flatten bits out and put your assets on it. You won't be able to use instancing, but textures matter more than geometry, and Kitbash is very good about maximizing texture usage. And in Blender you can have assets share material data. So if you link every "brick wall" material in Blender, you will only have a single "brick wall" surface in Daz Studio to adjust.

 

[MidnightArrow]

I splurged on Americana because I need it for my game.



This is how it loads in Blender but fixing it is pretty simple. Everything is grouped under an empty with the name of the building plus "_grp". In the outliner just right-click the top empty and choose "Select Hierarchy" to select all its children, then press the M key to move all of them to a new collection. Toggle the checkbox next to the collection to hide it. As you hide collections the viewport speed goes up since they're removed from evaluation.

After everything in the outliner is sorted, you can unhide the collections one by one. Select the top empty, hover your mouse over the viewport, and press Alt-G to clear the location and return them to the world's center. Then they're ready to use or to export.

Also they offer 2k textures now, which is nice. You'll need to cut and paste them into the folder marked 4k, for some reason, though.